925: Mailbag 10/11/24

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host, JJ zacheris J zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode nine and twenty five of the Late Round Fantasy football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thank you for tuning in. Underdog is the best place to play fantasy sports. You can play pick them in Champions Mode, or if you're like me, you can join some snake drafts for each week's slate of games. During October, Underdog's running a different promo every single day with Boost Tober. You can take advantage of those promos by signing up today, and if you sign up, you'll also get access to my rest of season rankings, which are updated in season every Tuesday. All you have to do is head to Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the app. Sign up, and when you sign up use promo code late Round. That'll get you access to these promos, a deposit bonus, and my rest of season rankings. Underdog is so much fun. Check it out now promo code Late Round. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Lee. It says, Hey, legend with Nico Collins on IR, it feels like Tank Dell should be in line for a target bump. However, Dell is already running a lot of routes but seems to be struggling to get separation and isn't earning targets. To what extent do you think Dell's upside is capped by what we seem to be seeing on tape? Dell was the biggest question that I got this week, and to be completely honest, I don't have a super concrete answer from what I've seen. I do think he might be just recovering from all the stuff that's happened to him. He was hurt last year, as we know, but he was shot during the off season and he was hurt during the season, So I do think that all of that is playing a role here. Matt Harmon, who studies wide receivers more closely than I do, he's echoed that sentiment that Dell just isn't exactly the same player right now that he was last year. But I think we should add the word yet to that, because players sometimes just need more reps, they need more opportunity, they need that before they get going again. Not only that, I know people don't want to hear this, but we also have a little bit of a sample size problem here this time of year, we do need to react to what we're seeing. Absolutely, if you don't react throughout a fantasy season, you're gonna lose. What's important, though, is not overreacting, overreacting to smaller sample sizes, and it's easy to do that with Dell, but there was an instance earlier this season where he was an inch away from a huge touchdown. When small things like that end up happening, it changes our narrative completely about a player, and it's a player who again hasn't been healthy for the full five games this year, which means our sample size is even smaller for Tank Dell. So I'm cautiously optimistic here because of what we saw last year, which was an elite rook season within the context of rookie seasons, and so far this year, he's still running routes on eighty six percent or so of Houston's dropbacks in healthy games. That's in an offense with a good offensive coordinator and a good quarterback. Combine that with what we saw a year ago and you at least have upside. Regardless of what we've seen so far this year, there's still upside with Tank Dell, and without Nico Collins, opportunity should come. We just have to hope that he's healthy enough to take advantage. So right now, I don't think that I would sell Tank Dell. I don't think that I would take this information of Nico Collins being sidelined and assume that someone in my league is going to value Tank Dell a whole lot, because look at what Tank Dell's done. Fantasy managers still operate off of production and what players have done, and since Tank Dell hasn't given us that production, I can't imagine that the market is super bowlish on Dell even with this Nico Collins injury. So overall, right now, I just think Dell's a hold. The last question from twitters from at ct Ulrich it says, is there any projected impact to Jets players based on the head coach change in New York? So if you read the reports or even listen to just Aaron Rodgers talk about the situation, it was very clear that they know that they need to do something different offensively. And then on Thursday they announced that Nathaniel Hackett will be turning play calling duties over to Todd Downing Downing was the offensive coordinator in Tennessee in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, where his teams were extremely run heavy, but that's not surprising because they had this guy named Derrick Henry when he was offensive coordinator for the Raiders in twenty seventeen, the opposite was true. They were actually pretty pass heavy, even in neutral situations. So I think that at least might tell us that he'll cater his offense to his personnel. That's a good thing, But I'll be honest, I don't think there's anything in his history that suggested he's some game changing offensive coordinator. He had a blow average season for Vegas during the Car Era in terms of touchdowns per game, and we did see a drop in offensive production in Tennessee when Arthur Smith left and Downing took over. Maybe that would have happened with Smith, but it's certainly not a good thing for Downing. The thing is, I just don't think that things can get that much worse than what we've seen the last couple of weeks for New York. Offensively, we have plenty of evidence that Nathaniel Hackett He's not it as a play caller, so I'm fine with this change, and I think that we should feel okay about it. So not really the head coaching change, but that kind of change is what can impact this Jets offense, the players in fantasy football, but also guys. I know this isn't very analytical for me to say, but when a big change like that happens at the top, it can kind of be motivating on a lot of fronts. These are humans at the end of the day. These are human beings playing football, and Robert Salah had been like objectively not a good coach throughout his time in New York. I think a lot of us were surprised that he had his job for this long. There's enough talent on this offense to be optimistic about any sort of change, and I really really hope that this results in Breece Hall getting a lot more work as a receiver in space. They need to do that more often, even if Braylen Allen sees more work on the ground. They need to use Breis hallmore as a receiver. That could very easily happen this week because he has a very good match up against Buffalo, who struggled against receiving backs the tests questions from Patreon. It's from rob It says you mentioned on your Patreon live stream that a running back reception is some multiple greater than a carry. Can you expand on that more? Is it because they get more Fantasy points per reception than per carry? Is it a PPR only stat? Thanks? So I talked about targets versus rush attempts on a Patreon live stream this past week. Historically, running back targets have been far more valuable than running back rush attempts in all formats. And when people talk about running backs so often, like in Tank Bigsby's case, they're only referring to what the running back is doing on the ground. It's not that things can't change like for Bigsby, except for whatever reason, the ground game work it's a lot more weight than the receiving work. But let's break this down by looking at twenty twenty four data only through week five. One could argue that this data is going to be more favorable for rushing numbers just based on how things have gone down this year, But that just makes this whole argument even more convincing. And I'm recording this before the Thursday night game, so I won't have that data. Now I'm going to remove fumbles from this data too, because fumbles can happen on any sort of play. We'll just look at how many points are being scored on rush attempts and how many points are being scored via running back targets. So far this season, we've had over thirty three hundred running back rush attempts, almost fifteen thousand running back rushing yards, and well over one hundred running back rushing touchdowns. Put that all together, and running backs are scoring point six y four fantasy points per rush. Again, that's slightly more favorable than what we've seen throughout history. This is actually favoring the ground game mar gument a little bit more, not the target side of things. So point sixty four points per rush attempt Now, clearly targets are gonna be worth more in PPR formats than in standard leads where you don't get points per reception. In twenty twenty four, a running back target has been worth one point six PPR points, it's been worth one point two half PPR points, which is almost double from what you get from a rush attempt, and then it's been worth point seven to eight standard fantasy points. So even when you're seeing zero points for a reception, targets are more valuable than rush attempts, Like we're gonna have running backs out there where a target for them is worth three times the value as a rush attempt in PPR formats, which is why I focus so heavily on the pass catching element in my analysis. But it matters for all formats, not just PPR ones. Now, the obvious response here is that running backs seem more work on the ground than they do through the air. That's one hundred percent true. I'm not saying that rush attempts don't make a player like Derrick Henry. He can be valuable because he's proven to be an outlier on the ground for years, not just in terms of efficiency, but he also sees a ton of work. I would love to have a running back who sees fifty rush attempts per game. He would be my RB one in fantasy football. But if one player is gonna see fifteen to seventeen rush attempts and zero targets, and then another one might see five fewer rush attempts per game but three more targets in a vacuum, I'm gonna prefer the latter player. Just as a baseline. This is why all the analysis and the draft guide shows that the best running back picks in fantasy football year in and year out, they're the ones who are seeing double digit percentage target shares regardless of their ground game work. And the worst ones are the ones who aren't seeing that work through the air. So hopefully that answers your question. But at the end of the day, just think about what a rush attempt is. We see so many rush attempts go up the middle, go to the outside, and they gain one or two yards, very rare. Are you going to see that off of a reception? And oftentimes running backs are going to have greater than fifty percent catch rates, a lot higher than a fifty percent catch rate. What that means is when they're targeted, they're generally gaining a good chunk of yards, and then you add in the PPR element and that's why we see the numbers that we see. So hopefully that helps answer your question. This has questions from Patreon. Is from say tou it says, hey, man, hope you're doing well. I'm doing great, thank you. What's going on with Calvin Ridley and Sam Laporta. Hard to see why they'd be doing so bad give an investment and performances last season. Thanks. So I got another question from Justin that said, is there a case of optimism to be made for the Titans wide receivers rest of season? So let's first look at Sam Laporta. We have to remember that he had an ankle injury. His numbers against the Cardinals were a little bit lower as a result of that. But if we look at weeks one, two, and four with Laporta, he averaged a route participation rate of about eighty two percent. That's pretty in line with what we saw last year. Now, a season ago, his target share per game rate was twenty two percent. Outside of that Arizona game that numbers fifteen percent, which is really being driven down by a bad Week two. So I don't know, man. I mean, like we knew that some regression was going to hit Laporta this year in the touchdown column, which is why to me he wasn't the obvious tight end one in this year's drafts. But we also just don't have that big of a sample size. I think his target share is probably gonna be a little bit lower than it was last year because of Jamison William's emergence, but even then it shouldn't consistently be in this like fifteen percent range. I'm kind of just holding steady with Laporter right now, and he might even be a by candidate. His team's already had their bye. You can push some of this aside because of his injury, and his route participation is still fine, So I'm not overly overly concerned now when it comes to Calvin Ridley. I've talked about this a lot on the show. The Tennessee offense has had a really tough schedule to start the year. They've had this second toughest schedule for wide receivers in particular. I think this whole offense is kind of a massive by low as a result, mostly because the cost to acquire right now is basically nothing. You can send players on your bench for guys like Calvin Ridley and DeAndre Hopkins right now. And Ridley himself is seeing desirable down the field. Looks he's twelfth in the NFL right now in air yard share. His target shair just hasn't totally caught up. It's only eighteen percent. But the Bears, Jets, Packers and Dolphins. That's an insanely difficult stretch for a top wide out. So, like I said, I think that you can buy really low right now and just cross your fingers that a lot of this, a lot of this in the Titans passing attack has been matchup induced. The last question this week is from twitters from at Nate Lane Underscore says, how should we approach the Green Bay wide receivers moving forward? The Packers are doing what we thought they would do this year. They're spreading the ball around. Even Jaden reed, they're clear top wide receiver, their top offensive weapon. He has a sub twenty percent target share, and this is exactly why I think that Tucker Craft can be a tight end one this season. One of the trends that I talked about in the Late Round Draft guide this year related to late round tight ends is that when later round tight ends emerge, they often do so on teams that don't have established pass catchers. There were thirty seven tight ends in my late round tight end sample that I analyzed. They were guys who went on to give us top ten seasons. Thirty six of the thirty seven had one or fewer teammates with a twenty percent target shair. So what I think we're gonna see is the standard volatility that we thought that we'd see from these wide receivers as long as all four of them are healthy in the short term. Christian Watson is out, so you have Romeo Dobbs, Dontavian Wicks, and Jayden Reid. They've got a chance to seem more consistent usage because their route participations are going to be more stable, especially someone like Dontavian Wicks, you know, if he actually catches the ball. But I know that a lot of people rightfully only look at tight ends or only care about tight ends, non streaming tight ends who are top two options on their team and their passing attacks, because that's where league winning tight ends come from. But to me, it's just as much about the target share competition. Actually, I'd say it might be more about that competition, because we can say that a player like Dobbs or Wis or Watson, they're ahead of Craft in the pecking order, But if they're not seeing a twenty five percent target share or some super high target share, that concept and that idea matters a lot less. If they're seeing a nineteen percent target share in eighteen percent target share, but Tucker Craft is still in the seventeen percent range. Then Tucker Craft can be a pretty usable tight end. But overall, it's Jaden Reid as the guy that you're starting every week, and Tucker Craft is now a tight end that we should feel pretty good about. And then we'll likely see some usability from Dobbs and Wicks while Watson's out. When Watson's back, I'm anticipating the non Reid wide receivers to be more matchup based and flexworthy and deeper formats. But I also think that Dontavian Wix still has an opportunity to see more work when Christian Watson is back. He just needs to play better than he did in Week five. And look, guys, that doesn't mean that these guys are bad assets to have. As I've talked about with this wide receiver room all off season, there's plenty of contingent upside. We're seeing that right now, But when they're all healthy, it's going to be difficult to trust them in a normal twelve team league where you're starting just a couple of wide receivers, which honestly is the kind of league that a lot of you guys are in in deeper formats though that's a totally different story. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks Alvy for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by shitting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, you know, follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make sure you check out the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. That's YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone. I got a Late Round percon back to this episode dropping later today. I hope you give that a listen. Otherwise, good luck in week six. I'll talk to you next week.